The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has found a total of 11,911 unattended items like mobiles and wallets between May 2015 and January 2016 at the Mumbai airport collectively worth Rs 2.63 crore. CISF sources said that other than 10 to 15 thefts every month, they find items which are forgotten by passengers.
Out of the 11,911 items, 5,146 items worth Rs 1.17 crore were directly handed over to passengers by CISF. Apart from this, 4,133 unattended items worth Rs 89 lakh were handed over to the lost and found department of airport operator by CISF, from where passengers later claimed their valuables.
CISF official spokesperson, Commandant Hemendra Singh, said, “Ensuring security is the primary work of the force. We are also handling the lost and found work to help passengers. Several times, passengers forget their baggage at the airport and we locate it. Sometimes, with the help of CCTV cameras, we locate the baggage and hand it over to concerned passengers. We also tell passengers to write their names and mobile numbers on the bags to identify them if they are misplaced. We also have a lost and found website where we upload information about such things and passengers can claim their belongings there as well.”
CISF sources said that in May, 1492 items were found, June 858, July 1390, August 1279, September 747, October 1289, November 1232, December 1822 and January 1845 at the city airport. Some of these items were returned to passengers while others were handed over to the airport operator.
In a few cases, CISF tracked down thieves with the help of CCTV footage and nabbed them to recover belongings of some passengers.
According to CISF sources, in one such case in October, 2015, a passenger flying to Bagdogra near Guwahati informed that his iPhone was missing. The CISF officials checked the CCTV footage and found that the phone was stolen by another passenger, a foreigner, at the X-ray scanner, who was flying to Delhi. CISF then got his address from airline officials and later, nabbed him to recover the passenger’s iPhone.
